Summer Landmarks workshops for K-12 educators

By Kathy StemmlerSpecial to The PREVIEW

Next year, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center will offer two weeklong NEH Summer Landmarks workshops for K–12 educators on a fascinating theme: Mesa Verde National Park: Convergences and Crossroads in the American Southwest.

The Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest preserves approximately 1,800 years of Pueblo Indian history, yet this history is too often left out of textbooks. Who creates America’s history and culture? How do we understand the depth of time, the people, and the cultures that comprise our American past and inform the present?

Guided by Crow Canyon archaeologists, educators and American Indian scholars, workshop participants will address these fundamental questions amid the landscape and architecture of Mesa Verde National Park, the first place in the United States to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The workshop includes:

• Experiential learning focused on how we learn about the unwritten past.

• Hands-on archaeological fieldwork.

• Field trips at Mesa Verde (with two nights at the park’s Far View Lodge).

Two sessions are available: June 22–28 or July 20–26, 2014. Applications are welcome from all interested participants — no previous anthropology or archaeology experience is required. K–12 public, private, charter, parochial and home-school educators are eligible, as are other K–12 school personnel, including administrators and librarians.

Each scholar receives a $1,200 stipend to cover the cost of travel and living expenses for the workshop.

For program details and application instructions, visit the website, www.crowcanyon.org. The application deadline is March 4, 2014 (postmark).

For information about all 2014 NEH Summer Institutes and Workshops, visit the NEH website, www.neh.gov/divisions/education/summer-programs. If you have questions, call (800) 422-8975, Ext. 157.